Edward Wilson interview

Description

Edward N. Wilson (1896-?) was an educator and civil rights activist who served with Lillie May Carroll Jackson on the Board of Trustees of the Sharp Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and on the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a member of the Governor’s Commission on Problems Affecting Negroes and conducted NAACP-affiliated police and citizenship training schools. In this oral history interview, Wilson describes his first meeting with freedom fighter Lillie May Carroll Jackson at the Sharp Street Methodist Church, and recounts her accomplishments on the church’s Board of Trustees. Wilson speaks about the police training school that he operated and how it produced the first Black police officer in Baltimore, Violet Hill Whyte, in 1937. Wilson describes the founding, purpose, and mission of the NAACP Citizenship Training School and states that this program eventually led to the NAACP voter registration drives. Wilson recollects Jackson’s campaigns against lynching, discusses the collaboration between Judge Morris Ames Soper and Judge Calvin Chestnut with the NAACP, and provides insight on the Governor’s Commission of Problems Affecting Negroes. He also evaluates the relationship between Theodore R. McKeldin and Jackson, and discusses Marse Calloway, a Black Republican political leader, and his work on the Afro-American newspaper.